I applaud Newmarket Hydro for their efforts, I would like to clarify a misconception that resulted from this article with respect to OZZ Corp.

I believe it is important that your readers have a balanced understanding of OZZ Corp.’s involvement in the project supplier selection process for the utility’s pilot program. Although the OZZ Smart Metering solution utilizes bi-directional communications and supports most Utility billing and asset management software, including Newmarket’s, OZZ was not invited to prequalify, or to tender on the single source contract.

OZZ is a recognized Ontario leader in Smart Metering Systems and Utility Services. Currently we provide Smart Metering solutions to major utilities including Toronto Hydro and Hydro One, who collectively manage close to two million meters of the total four million meters in Ontario. These solutions include “”Smart Meter”” pilot programs, load survey, and demand response pilots and are part of the utility standard design for new customers in Milton.

Our Smart Energy Network solution couples Canadian and international metering and AMR systems with multiple flexible, communications platforms as well as a suite of voice and data solutions specific to the Utility sector. Our own Internet-based Smart Information Management System provides the interface to existing Utility billing software to provide innovative, integrated, metering and utility management solutions.

Our vision at OZZ Corp. is to fundamentally change how energy is managed in Ontario. We look forward to working with utilities in this Province to cost effectively meet the metering and control needs of the new energy marketplace currently being defined.

As a technically savvy user of computers, Palm Pilots and cell phones, I can tell you the real reason Canadians are not taking up converged devices as quickly as we otherwise might: subscription cost.

Where my older Telus phone gave me ‘pay-as-you-surf’ access to their WAP services so I could do 411 lookups, my new Kyocera 7135 ‘smart phone’ doesn’t give me WAP when used with Telus (a ‘business decision’ I was told), and my only option is to pay a lot more money for Web access.

I am very keen to set up an IMAP server at my office so I can get my e-mail remotely, and I’d love to have access to the Web on the road, but I’m not willing to pay more for this ‘add-on’ feature than I’m paying for my entire phone plan itself.

Rogers, Bell and Telus need to wake up. Canadian business and the general public are not willing to pay huge sums of money for Web access on their phones. A new business plan to recoup the ridiculous fees paid for 3G licenses is well in order. They won’t get it back by charging high subscription fees to the relative few using it, as it’s only the relatively few who can actually justify the value (ROI).

The ‘early adopter’ phase is over, and all that’s left are savvy folks like me who refuse to pay ridiculous fees, and non-business users who are still choking on the cost of their high-speed connection at home. They ain’t paying a lot more for features they can live without.

The telcos need to think outside the box – off the top of my head, they could create packages for specific ports to access different protocols — POP, IMAP, FTP, and HTTP. Flat rate plans for $10 would probably do it. And while they’re at it, they need to increase the throughput caps by an order of magnitude — I stopped counting kilobytes a long time ago.

So as a business user of a PDA phone, and an architect for a major IT services provider, I think what most of the carriers have been missing is that the business market is hungry for a cost effective multi-function PDA / phone that also supports business application access. The market isn’t huge — perhaps 10 to 20 per cent of the business user population — but those users are the people you want to reach; namely executives and professionals. We continue to see increasing demand for this type of functionality.

Now a camera in my phone — why bother!

David C. WoelfleEnterprise ArchitectEDS Canada Solution Development

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